Automation & Workflows to Improve Your Creative Business

You might have heard how it’s beneficial to use automation and workflows in your business, but if you’re just starting out, the whole topic can feel a bit overwhelming.

In this post, we’ll go over why workflows are so important for supercharging your path to success, how you can use automation to save time, which apps are available for you, and how exactly to get started with the whole process.

The importance of having workflows

If you don’t have workflows in your business, you absolutely need to sit down and think about the processes you currently have and how they’re serving you (or not serving you). And by workflows, I mean the exact client experience for every part of their journey of working with you - these are the steps that you do during a specific scenario.

Workflows are important because your business should guarantee the same experience to every person who works with you. The process should be the same for everyone, which doesn’t mean you can’t change it over time, it simply means that it should be consistent from client to client. Consistency is what allows clients to trust you to deliver your product or service in a professional manner and to confidently recommend your business to their friends.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. It can simply be an outline of the tasks that you need to do when a specific thing happens in your business, like when a client purchases your product. Or it can be a video walkthrough of the process (this is great if you have an assistant or employees to train). It can be a full manual if you like, but sometimes that can be a large undertaking to even think about, not to mention put together. My suggestion is to start small and make it as easy as possible.

Using automation to save time

If you find yourself writing the same email over and over again, automation can potentially save you a lot of time. Emails are an obvious candidate for automation. In my business, I use a Studio Management System that will automatically email my clients reminders before their portrait session. It will also automatically send out emails after we finish the job, asking for feedback and a review. When you have just one or two clients, it’s often possible to just do these types of tasks by hand, but when you client list grows (or when life just gets too busy), it’s important to let automation handle these things so they don’t fall through the cracks.

Aside from having a system manage your client communication, you can also automate your emails, blog posts, social media, scheduling.. almost anything in your business can be systematized and batched to make your life easier.

Great apps and software to automate tasks in your business

Studio Management Systems are a great way to keep track of clients (they will also send out invoices, take payments, collect signed contracts, and handle scheduling). I personally use Iris as my client management system (mostly because it’s super simple and does everything I need), but there are many others as well, like Tave, HoneyBook, and Sprout Studio. And these are just for photography!

Automating social media publishing is another great thing to look into. I use Later (and have been using it since 2017) and there’s a totally free account you can start out with, too. Other great options are Planoly, Buffer, and Tailwind (this one is the top choice for Pinterest).

When it comes to email, you can write and schedule emails ahead of time. I use Flodesk which allows really easy setup of automated emails (use my code: EDUH7Z to get 50% off your subscription), but Mailchimp (which has a totally free account option) and Constant Contact are great too.

And lastly, scheduling. I use Calendly to allow my clients to easily schedule a call with me on my website (it seamlessly pulls from and puts appointments on my digital calendar and automatically sends reminders so I don’t have to do anything on my end). Other great scheduling systems are Acuity Scheduling, which integrates with Squarespace, and Square Appointments which is wonderful if you use Square for your product sales.

How to get started

First of all, you need to sit down and figure out where you’re spending your time within your business. What tasks are you doing day to day, every week, or every month? Once you have a list of all those to-do items, you can start taking a look at what can be automated or systemized (that would be anything you’re repeatedly doing).

Emails are a natural first starting point since they’re surely sucking up a lot of your time and they’re really easy to automate. You can set up templates within your email system and even schedule emails to go out at a later point, all within your mail app. Start small and get the “low hanging fruit” off your plate first.

Once you automate one thing, you will find that you have more time to devote to tackling the next thing, which might not be as easy or simple. So the key is, start small, tackle the easiest and most obvious thing first, and move on to the next. The beauty of automating and systematizing your work is that it creates a snowball effect of getting your time back, and also giving your clients a much more consistent service, too.

For me, automation and using systems made it possible to reach a 6-figure income in my business without the need for any employees or outside human help. Not that employees or assistants are bad, they simply weren’t the best fit for my personal needs. Setting up systems that essentially handle a lot of the work for me, I’ve been able to grow my business without late nights, spend more time with my family, and best of all, structure it all based on how I want things to run. There are plenty of options out there to get you started and allow you to take advantage of automating in your own business.